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Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…
In the first movement of Apposionata Op. 57, there's a pattern that goes from hand to hand, in groups of five. Difficult for the left hand. So my teacher had me learn it in the right hand too, but inverted.
So in the left hand it went Db Eb G Eb Db. In the right hand that would be Eb Db A Db Eb, an octave up. Mirror image. You'd play both at the same time.
It sounded awful (and then kind of cool after a while) but it worked really well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Wish some HN coder genius would write a program that given sheet music as input, outputs the top 1-3 recommended fingerings for that music with explanations for which rules were applied. While I am NOT claiming to be "some coder genius", a program that does exactly this is something on my "projects to-do" list. My partner (who's improving her piano skills) keeps crying out for more sheet music with fingerings... Is…
I think it's probably not overkill, and actually I think it may need to be more complex than that (though simple methods may prove to work well enough in practice, so try them first!). There's all sorts of stuff do do with momentum, wrist angle, position back or forward on the keys, etc., so it depends on where on the keyboard the notes are and what notes are at the same time or before and after them, and so on. To l…
I like the way you think. thumbs up
It's sad that this book is written in such a self-validating tone (the very first sentence is "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud), because the content is excellent. I read it a couple years ago and it completely changed how I approach practicing.
> "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud It fits with the current zeitgeist, where clickbait is everywhere, even in respected newspapers.
Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…
Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.
If you're learning on your own as an adult, I highly recommend "Alfred's Basic Piano Course" book 1. You start from the very start, and by the end of the book, you'll be able to sight read
It's sad that this book is written in such a self-validating tone (the very first sentence is "This is the best book ever written on how to practice at the piano!" for crying out loud), because the content is excellent. I read it a couple years ago and it completely changed how I approach practicing.
Could you elaborate on what in it helped change your practice approach? I tried reading it a while back and I couldn’t really get past the style. I’m sure there is good advice in there, but it’s very off putting due to the rambling style.
- Do not try to practice the whole piece at once. Split it into pieces
- Start by listening to the piece. If possible get multiple performances/recordings (usually easy with YouTube) to get a feel for different interpretations.
- Take the piece and number each measure from 1 to finish. Figure out where the repetitions are, which measures are the easiest, which the hardest (this will differ for left and right hand usually), where key/timing changes happen
- Practice both hands separately, start with a single measure that is one of the hardest (if need be you can split it up even more). Overlap the measures slightly so that you also practice the transitions. Play as slowly as you need to so that you can play expressively from the very beginning (albeit with only one hand). As you learn the measure, increase speed, but only so much that you can still play expressively. Switch hands once your hand gets tired.
- Since one hand (usually the left hand) is often much easier to play in many measures or even entire pieces, it will get much less practice. To offset this, make sure to also practice the hardest measure for each hand first. Sometimes you might even need to practice the left hand from a different piece (if the current piece only has easy stuff), while the right hand is resting.
- Keep practicing all the measures in the piece in this fashion (with one hand) until you can play them expressively even at higher speeds than the piece is usually played at.
- Now is the time to put the hands together. Use the same method of practice as described above (splitting up the piece into overlapping measures, starting with the hardest one), only this time use both hands.
There are other nuggets of wisdom in the book, for example:
- How to properly practice playing chords
- Very fast notes played in succession are really just "imperfectly played chords", where your hand is already in the position of playing the chord, except one or more fingers are slightly lower than the others as your hand goes down. Thinking of it this way, you're not trying to speed up individual notes, but "slow down" a chord.
Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…
Having the same struggle as an adult learning piano. How do highly-skilled pianist come up with fingering? Are there any kind of rules? I think there are. But it may be so automatic that they don't actively think about them. On the other hand, if we have a large quantity of high-quality sheets with fingering labeled, we can train a transformer which is supposed to learn the implicit rules pretty well.
Anyway, I labeled all the keys on my machine. C-D-G-F-G-A
I memorized C for chopsticks. (C will always be the white key to the left of the two black keys.)
I memorized F for Fork. (F will always be to left of three black keys.)
I then found a song I liked on Google with chords.
I picked a Ronny Millsap song, and played it over, and over again.
Am I any good--hell no, but keeping piano/guitar simple helped me.
Eddie Van Halen saw that his son was having a very hard time learning to play bass guitar. Wolfe told his father their are just too many chords. Eddie gave him some great fatherly advice.
"You don't need to learn all the chords. 11 chords will allow you to play a lot of songs."
A lot of Country, and rock, songs only have a few chords.
Starting a book by singing one's praise is already dubious. Then you come across this >(...) Mental Play (...) It is almost unbelievable that such an essential skill has been mostly neglected by piano teachers. which is a top "crank red flag".
> The probability of playing incorrectly is nearly 100%, because there is almost an infinity of ways to play incorrectly but only one best way.
I'm sure this book has some useful information within, but my 5 minutes spent checking out different parts have so far left a very poor impression. Combined with its verbosity, it's hard to justify giving it serious attention...
Starting a book by singing one's praise is already dubious. Then you come across this >(...) Mental Play (...) It is almost unbelievable that such an essential skill has been mostly neglected by piano teachers. which is a top "crank red flag".
Does this book cover how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering? By finger numbering I mean the standard scheme where thumb=1, index=2, ..., pinky=5, and the notes on the sheet music have these numbers. This is the biggest mystery to me. I understand there is not a One True Canonical Fingering for a given sequence of notes. But some fingerings make the music much easier than…
> how to figure out finger numbering for sheet music that doesn't have finger numbering It is one reason why instrumentalists spend so much time practicing things like scales and arpeggios. Because in practice 90% of music is made of these or small variations on them, so once these are "muscle memory" you truly don't think about fingerings any more.
When I took classical piano lessons, each week we'd have a new key assignment and we'd have to practice scales, chords, and arpeggios in that key.
My piano teacher hand crafted a very nice sheet that listed all scale and arpeggio fingering for all keys, but that is buried somewhere in storage. This website [1] seems to have the same info.